Waiting for location permission...

Broadcast and play with friends

Waiting for location permission...

This site uses Cookies for basic functionality for visitors who have accounts with us. Also, our trusted and reputable third party advertisers use cookies to determine which ads to serve.

We care a lot about your privacy and making sure that your experience on this site is a safe one, and in that effort we store as little information as possible. You can read more about that in our 2018 GDPR statement here.

Please accept our terms of use which can be found here. If you have any questions, or you do not agree and would like us to opt you out, please contact us using the contact form.

Go for the Throat Discussion

6 days ago

To begin with, this is probably the most creative deck I have ever seen. That being said, I playtested it and see some minor problems. I will cover all of the problems I see with it, then cover all of the solutions. I really like the concept of this deck, and I want to see it work in an actual game.
Problems:
This deck isn't going to win from dealing damage, not even close. Therefore,
Eidolon of the Great Revel
really isn't going to anything what so ever. He is just 2/2 for , and serves no real purpose. The same goes for
Dimir House Guard
. Like, yes ok, he can regenerate, but there aren't many creatures here to sacrifice. Additionally, I played this deck several times, and not once did I see
Vampiric Link
be of any use. The most life per attack you can get with it is 2, and most likely your creature dies from it. I just think there could be better cards.
Improvements:

During the beginning of the game, you are very vulnerable. You need some smaller creatures such as
Typhoid Rats
. They can be played turn one and can effectively block almost any creature. Replace
Vampiric Link
with these, it will help so, so much.

@xeratheenigma, I've considered cards such as
Go for the Throat
and
Terminate
, but holding up 2 mana every turn can feel like a serious drag and slows my board progression over time, so I would prefer to keep it to 1-mana instant speed spells if applicable. (Plus a lot of popular commanders utilize black anyway, but I agree that I'd like a card that had better range as it feels like a worse
Pyroblast
.)

The Gitrog player in my play group doesn't own a
Chains of Mephistopheles
, but I'm fairly certain it's discard effect would trigger before the dredge trigger unless they have two
Dakmor Salvage
's. Either way, it's discard effect by itself isn't an activated ability, so I question if using one to cycle through the deck this way would share the same un-deterministic qualities as using the discard phase. (And thus be frowned upon in tournament settings.)

1 week ago

I’d rather play more versatile removal such as
Go for the Throat
instead of
Dark Betrayal
. You should definitely play
Leyline of the Void
as it doesn’t affect your yard and cancels draw triggers for gitrog. You could also play
Spirit of the Labyrinth
to slow gitrog down but note that they can win through this effect if they haven’t drawn a card for the turn they intend to go off on. The problem with hate creatures that affect gitrog is that they typically have 1 toughness which if they run
Darkblast
can be pretty lights out.

2 weeks ago

jreynolds No that's not ignorant! Props for asking nicely and wanting to know. To be completely honest, it'll be really hard to make this deck stand a chance against competitive modern decks because horses are so few and far between. But I imagine you want to do horses for fun, not to win tournaments lol. At the same time, if you're gonna play a deck you might as well make it optimal. Decks that don't do anything aren't that fun after all.

Anyway, Authority of the Consuls isn't a terrible card, but it is not consistent life gain since a good amount of modern decks run little to no creatures. Plus, if you draw it any point after your first turn then it sucks because it missed its opportunity to do anything. Revitalize and Fountain of Renewal both just gain life and replace themselves by drawing a card. Since you want to be proactive in this deck, and you already have Shield Mare and Diomand Mare for life gain, cards that only gain you life are just wasted space. Tragic Slip is a fine card, but
Go for the Throat
and
Doom Blade
are better in this deck. Even better is
Path to Exile
, but it cost a few bucks.

3 weeks ago

There are a few options here. If you want to stay in mono black, you can look into dredge:
Stinkweed Imp
and
Golgari Thug
and
Darkblast
. In order to get these cards into your graveyard in the first place, you will need to include cards that allow you to discard. If you have the money for it:
Collective Brutality
is a fantastic way to do it. If budget is more of a concern then something like
Dark Deal
is ok but not great. You could always use
Rotting Rats
to make your self discard (its also fine if you mill it, since you can just unearth it).

One thing I just noticed is that you've got over 60 cards in the deck. It would probably be best if you kept to that 60 card minimum. This will increase the consistency of the deck overall. One way you could do this, if you like having a variety of different cards, is play a card like
Mausoleum Secrets
. This will allow you to just play one copy of niche cards like
Distress
,
Liliana, Heretical Healer
Flip, and
Go for the Throat
. You can also cut cards like
Mind Rot
and
Ratcatcher
(3 mana for that discard ability is too expensive, and 6 mana is definitely too expensive). If it were me though, I would just cut all the extraneous cards, not even bother with the
Mausoleum Secrets
and just focus on the rats.

If you wanted to do multi color (it will be more expensive though). I would recommend a few cards. Red-black is the route I would take. You get cards like
Faithless Looting
and
Experimental Frenzy
. The looting is good for dumping cards into your graveyard. Frenzy is a combo card that allows you to keep playing cards off the top of your library as long as you have mana (and as long as it isn't a second land). If you want to go the frenzy route, I would recommend
Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx
as a good way to make a bunch of mana and cast a bunch of rats. This is kind of a different way to play the deck and might be too muddy with the self mill plan. So I would either choose the mill or the frenzy plan.

If you like brewing decks, I host a deck brewing podcast. You can check out all the decks we've brewed on my tapped out page. If you want to listen to it, I'd greatly appreciate it. We are on iTunes (search: mtg Cold Brew) or on our website: mtgcoldbrew.buzzsprout.com

3 weeks ago

I do agree that
Go for the Throat
is better than
Cast Down
- my meta has a lot of artifact decks and was why I had it, but I do I agree GftT is broadly better and I'll update it to reflect that.

My thinking with
Hieroglyphic Illumination
is that, while both its modes are subpar, having both options is actually good for this deck, and in practice I haven't had problems with it. It's pretty nice with hands where you have homunculus and not Gifts, since you can hold up any interaction then cast it at the end of their turn to draw two, hopefully digging you into a Gifts for turn 4. The cantrip 'mode' isn't good, but it does get an instant in the yard on turn one for homunculus to flip. Don't forget about flipped Homunculus' discount - Hiero as an instant speed Divination is actually pretty good. I can totally see the argument for just going with better cantrips, but it's worked decently for me up till now. If I replace it, I actually think
Thought Scour
would be the initial pick, since the self mill is actually reasonably helpful.

Thirst for Knowledge
and
Champion of Wits
probably seem weird, but there are reasons I have included them. There are hands with this deck where you have a fatty and Unburial Rites in your opening hand, and having discard outlets that discard two cards is actually really helpful there. This is the same reason
Collective Brutality
is such an all-star in this deck - I have won games by discarding a fatty and Elesh Norn on turn three and reanimating them on turn 4. In addition to giving a little more consistency to the plan, they both dig into the deck.
Champion of Wits
in particular can be a quasi-finisher that refills your hand at a pretty low opportunity cost.

I do agree that the countermagic is subpar, but it's here mostly to protect the fatties. That's the main reason I'm running
Negate
- it slots in extremely well into the ideal sequence of cantrip -> homunculus -> Gifts. On turn four, you'll be reanimating for three mana thanks to the discount, letting you hold up one blue mana for the negate to protect against spot removal, board wipes, and surgicals. (Mana Leak also benefits from this.) I do want to try out Logic Knot, but I'm not sure if the anti-synergy with Homunculus is worth it.
Supreme Will
is an interesting suggestion! I hadn't thought of that and that might be promising.

Fatal Push
is a great suggestion! I'm not sure what to slot it in for, though. It could be a replacement for
Cast Down
and would probably be fine there, and that's probably what I'll test initially.

All that said, I can definitely envision a more control oriented version of this deck using more/better cantrips and counterspells with a higher percentage of removal, and that might be the next direction I take it in. Thanks a ton for taking the time to evaluate my deck :)

Go for the Throat occurrence in decks from the last year

Commander / EDH:

Modern:

All decks: 0.06%

Black: 0.57%

Golgari: 0.14%

U/B (Dimir): 0.32%

Legacy:

All decks: 0.06%

Black: 0.83%

Magic the Gathering, FNM is TM and copyright Wizards of the Coast, Inc, a subsidiary of Hasbro, Inc. All rights reserved. This site is unaffiliated. Articles and comments are user-submitted and do not represent official endorsements of this site.